Tuesday, January 24, 2012

Sun-dried Tomato Ravioli with Ricotta and Spinach Filling [Zack]

We love having dinner parties that have (optional)
participation in preparing the meal. One
of our go-to plays is to pre-make pasta dough and have our guest help us roll
out the pasta. Everyone enjoys helping
and laughing in the kitchen and it’s always gratifying for guests to eat what
they have helped make. For this recipe,
we had some friends over from Switzerland and invited a few more couples. They all loved cutting out ravioli shapes with the
cutter (and even got inspired for some weird ones).

On the pasta dough: Lately, I’ve been reading a lot about food dyes and chemical
additives. I wanted to figure out a way
to color ravioli naturally – I tried adding some tomato paste to the pasta
dough. It really dialed up the color and
added a fun subtle flavor. The tomato flavor is
not overpowering, so you can stuff raviolis these with anything that you can
think of: ground beef, lobster, goat
cheese, etc.

Process:

Follow the pasta dough process (more details provided
here). Place your flour and salt in the
food processor and pulse twice to distribute the salt. Add the eggs, a 4 or so hydrated sun-dried tomatoes, and the tomato paste.

Pulse until the dough looks like large
breadcrumbs. Add a dash of water at a
time until right before it begins to ball up. Take the dough out
and knead it on a floured surface until it’s smooth – about 5 minutes.

Cover with cling wrap and place in the fridge to let the
dough hydrate. You can make the dough up
to 2 days before you have your party.

In the meantime, dice enough onions and garlic for both your
ravioli filling and for your sauce. Wash
your spinach so you don’t have sandy pasta.
In a medium pan, sweat your onions for 5 minutes, and then add the
garlic. After 2 minutes, add in your
spinach all at once and cook down. Sprinkle
with a bit of salt for seasoning. Set
the pan aside and let it cool off.

In a large bowl, dump in your ricotta cheese. Add in your cooled spinach and mix
everything up. Taste for seasoning and
add lots of fresh-cracked black pepper.

Start rolling out your pasta dough (or have your guests do
this) and get as many long sheets of dough that your pasta will make. I like rolling mine out to the 3rd to last thinnest setting. Add a dollop (about 1 heaping T) of the filling on the bottom half of
the dough (horizontally). Separate them
about 1 inch apart so you can fold over the top half.

Dip your finger in a bit of water and trace
around the outside of the dollops of filling.
You don’t want to soak the dough, just dampen it. This will help your dough stick to
itself. Fold over the top half
horizontally over your filling and lightly press out the air in between
them.

Use your ravioli cutter, a round cup, or a knife to separate the ravioli by cutting between them.
If you aren’t using a ravioli cutter, use the tines of a fork to press
down the edges to insure a good seal.

Once your production line has finished, start boiling some
salted water and preparing the sauce. We
are going to “simulate” a cream sauce.
It’s not totally sin-free because we need to add a bit of cream for
flavor, but our chicken stock will take us most of the way.

Sweat some onions first and then add garlic in a pan with a
bit of olive oil. Add in 1 cup of
chicken stock and ½ cup of heavy cream.
Cook down until it’s a nice thick consistency.

The ravioli need only about 4 minutes in the boiling water
since the pasta is fresh. Gently strain the ravioli into a colander and then place in a bowl with your sauce. Enjoy the meal!